Thank you for that! She was always a big fan. And what she said, after, was one of the most honest and courageous things ever said by one star about another, on their passing. "We abandoned him." She let NO ONE off the hook. I was rather stunned. She's quite a woman.

Yes, of course, he was always "over-choreographed," but this once, I think, he seemed to be charged with that something undefinable, that even he couldn't control that night. (I remember feeling as though I'd been hit by lightning. And it wasn't as if I never heard of this guy!) With Michael, everything HAD to be "perfect," as though "perfection" actually existed. If not: disaster. He was not pleased with his performance that night. He said he didn't make it to his toes "perfectly," and recalled being nearly distraught over what he saw as a failure. It surprised him that others immediately loved it.

It's at the core of who he was: capable of jumping over the moon, but too afraid to just go ahead and do it. But that he got his terror into the music, made the music. Life was a moment-to-moment proposition for him, and you could hear it with every moaned "oh noooo!" What's interesting is that you nailed that: you can see that fear of "the unpredictable" literally, as you said "every millisecond." It was really a fear of disaster. And how did it all end? In disaster.

I always dug Madonna, but for entirely different reasons: she is, after all, a free spirit. He was not.